PU REACTORS | DECOMMISSIONING
pumps and tunnels were dug up and razed, along with the auxiliary buildings. This left the reactor core and shields. These were sealed up and a sloped steel roof constructed over them to draw off rainwater. Cocooning of C Reactor began in 1996, and was completed in 1998. D Reactor followed in 2002, F Reactor in 2003, DR Reactor in 2004, H Reactor in 2005 and N Reactor in 2012. K East and K West were entombed in 2022. B Reactor, however, was listed on the National Register
of Historic Places in 1992 and it was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 2008. In 2015, it became part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park alongside other sites at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos.
The five reactors at the SRP were moderated with heavy
water instead of graphite and were intended to produce tritium as well as plutonium. The first, R Reactor, began operation in 1953 followed by the similar P Reactor in 1954. R and P were the largest of the five. L and K, which also began operation in 1954, represented a next generation of reactor and C Reactor, the last to begin operation in 1955, represents a third type. R operated for a decade and was closed in 1964. In 1968 L was closed, but it was refurbished and restarted in 1985 to replace C Reactor, which was closed in 1986 after suffering numerous heat exchanger leaks. K, L, and P were all shut down in 1988 and the following year SRP was renamed the Savannah River Site (SRS) K Reactor was refurbished in the early 1990s and started briefly in 1992 but was shut down almost immediately. Currently, the P and R reactor facilities have been permanently decommissioned. By the end of 2011, they had been fully grouted (filled with concrete) and permanently sealed – a process known as In-situ Decommissioning (ISD) This avoided the potential hazards and cost associated with generating and disposing of an estimated 137,000 tonnes of contaminated debris for each reactor. DOE said the buildings’ radiological contamination, heights, extensive basements, and thick concrete walls made the effort complex and difficult. Extensive planning and hazard analysis ensured the ISD was completed safely. Actual, fully-burdened costs for each of the reactor ISD project was about $73m, significantly less than the estimated cost of about $250m for full demolition including reactor vessel removal and below-grade decontamination of each reactor complex. In 2012, contractors completed placement of about
1,700 truckloads of concrete into the C Reactor building. The reactor’s huge, below-ground disassembly basin required more than 2.8m gallons of grout designed to permanently seal the area. Before the area could be grouted, the contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, had to remove about 2m gallons of water through an evaporation process. The rest of the facility was scheduled to be preserved but in 2015, the US Department of Energy (DOE) said it planned to decommission the facility due to deterioration, mould damage, water damage and a lack of maintenance over 25 years. Both L and K reactors are now used for other purposes.
L Reactor is used to store used nuclear fuel and is expected to continue to do so until 2034. K Reactor has been modified to store plutonium that was intended to be used by the cancelled Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
www.neimagazine.com | WNE Special Edition | 17
Russian reactors In Russia, a total of five industrial uranium-graphite plutonium production reactors operated at SCC: I-1, EI-2, ADE-3, ADE-4, ADE-5. The first (I-1) was launched in 1955 followed by EI-2 in 1958. Together they formed the first dual-purpose nuclear power plant producing both weapons-grade plutonium and 100 MWe of electricity. In the 1960s SCC put three more dual-purpose reactors into operation – ADE-3 (1961), ADE-4 (1964) and ADE-5 (1965) boosting power production to 600 MWe. Under a Russia-US agreement to end production of
Above: The ADE-2 is now a museum
Below: The Savannah River Plant is another legacy plutonium production location. Source: US DoE
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